Bangladeshi women in garment industry held back by knowledge gap

TOKYO — As Bangladesh’s garment factories — crucial foreign exchange earners for the South Asian country — reopen after a major political earthquake, they face a critical issue: Long the backbone of the industry, women have been increasingly departing due to a host of factors including hindrances to advancement.

Among female workers who left the Bangladesh Ready Made Garment (RMG) sector in 2021, just 1% did so as supervisors, according to a report last year by the Ethical Trading Initiative, a U.K. alliance of trade unions, NGOs and companies.

“As supervisors require additional skills, such as basic accountancy and communication skills, women workers with limited education tend to lack the confidence to pursue such roles,” according to a report on gender composition in Bangladesh’s garment industry published in 2020 by the International Labour Organization.

With an interim government working to restore political and economic stability in the country — popular protests forced longtime leader Sheikh Hasina to flee abroad in early August — education is seen as one solution to improving opportunities and conditions for women in the critical sector.

In Japan, the University of Tokyo has a joint program with the Asian University for Women (AUW), an institution of higher learning located in the port city of Chittagong in southeastern Bangladesh. The two schools carried out an exchange event in Tokyo from the end of last month.

AUW teaches almost 1,500 female students in Asia, including from Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Nepal. It focuses on those with limited access to schooling due to economic or cultural constraints.

Kathy Matsui, a former vice chair of Goldman Sachs Japan, spoke to Nikkei Asia about women working in Bangladesh’s garment factories. (Photo by Tamayo Muto)

Some of its students previously labored in sewing factories that partnered with Japanese casualwear manufacturer Uniqlo. The brand, which manufactures in low-wage Asian countries including Bangladesh, has taken an interest in supporting students, regardless of gender, with a company foundation organizing an event at the university gathering.

International clothing manufacturers have come under increasing pressure to improve operations in Bangladesh and other production locations, and also to remedy procurement practices seen as problematic.

Uniqlo came under suspicion in 2021 by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which blocked imports of company shirts, citing insufficient evidence they were free from forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region.

The brand’s owner Fast Retailing, which denied any link to forced labor, has increased supply chain and compliance checks.

Kathy Matsui, a former vice chair of Goldman Sachs Japan who participated in the university event, said women in developing Asia need more skills to be “change makers” rather than employees. “If you think about leadership of a country, NGO or organization, you do need a higher level of education,” she told Nikkei Asia in an interview, calling it a “magic bullet.”

Matsui said “women can lead a garment factory” in Bangladesh rather than working in the manufacturing process. The key, she stressed, is knowledge.

AUW recently introduced a master’s program in apparel and retail management, Matsui said. She recalled visiting Bangladesh to attend an AUW graduation ceremony and meeting a graduate who had worked at a clothing factory. “She and her classmates are now starting their own apparel company,” she said, adding that it is led solely by women.

Matsui said that if Bangladeshi women can work at the management level in clothing factories those facilities will have “better labor practices, different from the typical garment factories” operated predominantly by men.

Still, the challenge is enormous, with the Ethical Trading Initiative acknowledging that Bangladeshi women all too often assume there is little they can do about the roles they are offered in the workplace.

“It appears women have accepted the norm that they can only work as helpers or operators reporting to male line managers and supervisors,” ETI’s report report said, calling upward mobility “extremely limited” for female garment workers.

ETI also cited other factors affecting women in the industry — pressures related to pregnancy, childrearing and other family responsibilities as well as overtime work and abusive situations.

Tahsin Zulnoon, a second-year AUW undergraduate from Bangladesh, is clear-eyed about the severe situation facing women in her country but also sees hope that she can be a force for change.

“Most of the females are poor and so they work in garment factories,” she said, adding that she believes women should have opportunities beyond that industry in a broad range of fields.

She aims to obtain a master’s in the U.S. and raise awareness of broader opportunities for women.

“I want to be someone who people would listen to,” she said. “I want to be significant to them. … I do think that I can deliver a message to my community.”

source : asia.nikkei